


Life After Dying

by Magi_Silverwolf



Category: Memoir - Fandom, Original Work
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief, Mentions of Suicide, Mourning, Paganism, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 03:27:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10453908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magi_Silverwolf/pseuds/Magi_Silverwolf





	

“Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.” – Steven Moffat, _Sherlock_ , _The Lying Detective_

-= [_P =-

I flinch as another person compliments my hair. I know it isn’t being done maliciously. It is just a cultural difference; it is just ignorance. The knowledge doesn’t stop each cheerful syllable from feeling like a knife, stabbing and ripping at my flesh. I want to scream at them, because how can they not see that I am bleeding? I want to weep from the pain of my shattered soul.

Instead, I flash the speaker a smile and speak empty words of gratitude.

It’s not their fault that they can’t recognize what cut hair means on a Choctaw. How can they know that it is the first ritual for the ascension of a loved one to Ancestor? Even if they could be expected to know that, most of those giving the compliments are not those who regularly talk to me and probably do not recognize my Native heritage due to my lighter skin. They can’t know, so I can’t be angry at them.

Maybe this all would be easier if I could be angry. There are plenty of targets, after all. I can be angry at your biological mother, for presuming that no one would want to mourn you because of how you died. I can be angry at the cop who shot you instead of doing what he was called to do, which was help get you into a behavioral unit. I can get angry at the media for painting you as a violent sociopath who would have killed children instead of acknowledging that you were just a desperate man threatening no one beside yourself and armed with nothing but a basic kitchen knife. I can be angry at Jean, for pushing you so far past your endurance level that you had a meltdown while already struggling against the intense depression. I can be angry with Alex for just blurting out the news on the phone instead of in person. I can be angry at you for ignoring our deal—that if ever you got to that point, you were to call me, you were supposed to come to me.

I want to be angry. I want to feel that fire burning away everything. Instead, I am filled with sticky sorrow and dark despair, leaving me without even the ability to cry around the sense of failure choking me. I give another empty smile as another person tells me how much the shorter hair matures my face, and I ignore the internal thought that it might not be the haircut that makes me look older.

It’s nobody’s fault and it’s everyone’s.

-= [_P =-

Nearly 30,000 Americans commit suicide every year. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among people twenty-four to thirty-five years old. In the United States, suicide rates are highest during the spring. – Source: DoSomething.org, _11 Facts about Suicide_

-=[_P=- 

I stared at Alex as I struggled to breathe. He had been so angry about my relationship with Lore, despite how Alex and I had ended. He had been convinced that I was only with Lore in order to get revenge against _him_ for leaving me, as if I would be so callous to the man who held me as I cried about the failing relationship which I had been convinced was going to last a lifetime, and the resulting loss of all my hopes and dreams. I had heard about their fight when Alex had figured out that I was seeing Lore, and how vicious it was because not even a full day before Lore had seen the bruises Alex left on my throat. Now, _now_ , Alex did _this_ and it was more than a gesture. It was a symbol and I could see in his eyes that he knew it.

My hands shook as I accepted the sheathed dagger. I couldn’t stop myself from pressing it between my breasts, cradling it as I had Lore himself after his father’s death. It was piece of Lore that I hadn’t been expecting to receive, least of all if Alex had any say in the distribution of Lore’s altar tools. Athames and wands aren’t normally given to anyone outside of a witch’s coven or family except to those who are considered life-mates or spouses. Among our mish-mashed group, a bunch of solitary practitioners who were either the only or one of few in their family, things like this got complicated. I had thought for sure that Kim was going to lay claim over all of Lore’s tools—and even with Lore’s stepmother calling in Alex to dismantle the altar, that Alex would never acknowledge that even without formal relationship boundaries, Lore was mine and I was his, because doing so would mean that I had moved on from waiting for him to decide if he wanted me again.

It was a pitiful acknowledgment, but it was the first time that someone had understood. The last two months I had faced a number of people who had just stared at me as I tried to explain that Lore had been important. He had been my lover, but we had not been a couple, and I would not shame his memory by lying about it now. I could explain that he was my best friend, but it did not seem to convey the depth of feeling I had for him. Explaining about how our colors would blend and cling and stain meant trying to explain about the synesthesia and most people would not understand it even then. But the man who had tossed me aside on the eve of our thirteenth anniversary and then had sniped at me for _months_ about betraying him for daring to start a relationship afterwards, that man had just handed me _understanding_ along with the dull-edged magical tool.

I didn’t fight as Alex pulled me against his chest and held me there like he used to do before it had all gone wrong. It was only later that I realized I had been weeping.

-= [_P =-

An estimated 7% of police contacts in jurisdictions with a population of 100,000 or more people involve the mentally ill. 92% of patrol officers have an interaction with a mentally ill person in crisis at least once a month and the average rate is six encounters a month. Mentally ill people are four times more likely to be killed in an encounter with police than any other demographic.

– Source: Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, _Guide No. 40_ by Gary Cordner

-= [_P =-

I bit out the reply to the question. I know that it came out more bitter than I had intended and far angrier than what was appropriate for a classroom setting. I knew going into this class that the professor liked to instigate arguments for the sake of arguments, that it was how he thought philosophy was supposed to be taught. I had planned to use nothing but facts and logic to discuss my positions. I had planned to never let them see me as an emotional wreck because I knew that would undermine my credibility and since I knew from the first day that I was among a very small minority, I had to cling to every bit of credibility I had.

But I couldn’t let them dismiss the suicidal like that, like it was no big deal if they died, as if it weren’t the greatest tragedy of life.

A person didn’t need to be isolated to feel alone. They didn’t have to be in some horrible situation to be depressed. They didn’t have to be otherwise dying or crippled to want their pain to stop. Sometimes it wasn’t even them who did the final deed—and they didn’t always have time to leave a note or say goodbye or _make a phone call to ask for help_.

Death is not kind. It is not a mercy. Death does not end pain, so much as it transfers it to others.

I was finally angry, after six months, but it didn’t burn like I wanted. Instead, I was freezing. I could only shiver as I snapped my words at the kid across the room who suddenly seemed _so fucking young_ , and that realization made me even more angry. How dare a child (even at eighteen) speak so confidently about something for which he clearly had no frame of reference? I could feel the entire class watching as I exploded at the kid, and I knew, _I knew_ , that only a few of them could understand any better than the boy now staring with terrified eyes as I outlined _every_ statistic and then _translated_ with heartless cruelty. I have no idea why the professor wasn’t stopping me—this was against the rules he had laid out at the start of the semester and I _knew_ it but I couldn’t _stop_ even as I watched the comprehension bloom on his face.

The girl who had sat beside me on the first day so that we could talk about both of us having semicolon tattoos pulled me out of my seat once I had finally stopped spewing facts and then out of the classroom. She sat with me in an empty lounge as I shivered and sobbed, and she had to have missed her other classes that day because I know that I did. She didn’t complain or even comment on it. When I returned to class the next time, no one mentioned the outburst or how little I participated in the discussions until we had moved onto another topic.

I had wanted to be angry, but now that I had been, all I felt was numb.

It didn’t help that it had been Lore’s birthday.

-= [_P =-

“A semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life.” – Project Semicolon

-= [_P =- 

It's hard. Every day is just one more without you and it is _just so freaking hard_. You're everywhere—you're at my school, and in my causes, and my work, and all of my rituals. Julia has claimed your colors—crimson and royal purple—and she wears them to keep you alive, but you're _not_ and it's _hard_.

I look through my Memories and see just how _well_ you got me and I got you—every corny Lit reference, every pun and snarky comment, every coffee and Coke reference, songs like a shotgun blast across the genres. It's not fair that I love you and you left, just like everyone always does—but I can't even really blame you, can I? I can cite the numbers and circumstances and statistics—I can step back and see the _how_ of it all, but that does nothing for the _why_.

I love you, so very much, and very much in the present tense, but we weren't really anything that would let other people understand why it is so hard—to live, to breathe, to _somehow_ _continue_ on without you. I want to; I need to; I _must_ —but it's just so _hard_.

How can anyone compare to you? You died without ever breaking my trust. Everyone has done so at least once, but the closest you ever came was requesting to remain neutral in Alex and my dispute, and even then, I saw the flash in your eyes when you saw the bruises he had left and noticed the way you tensed along your shoulders. I heard about your fight with him, you know. You denied it but Alex saw no reason to lie about the shiner he was sporting when he picked up the girls. So it's hard to find someone who will live up to what _has to be_ an idealization of you—even the thoughts of things which used to infuriate me are things which I would now welcome with open arms, because it would mean that you were _here_...

People joke about wanting my eidetic memory, but do they realize that I remember every moment we had together along with every single one _without_ you? Each one is like a cheese grater against my soul. It's hard to wake up every morning and for a brief five seconds, between dreaming and waking, you're alive and well and just waiting for a coffee break text—for five seconds, I still have my best friend, my friend without any boundaries. Then I lose you all over again...and it's _so freaking hard_.

We should be joking about how you are over the hill now that you're thirty-five and I should be laughing about you giving me your plot bunnies as you ply me with coffee and cuddles—which I totally still change to orgasms when I tell people because of the gob-smacked look they get; I know how you loved hearing about who I had freaked out with the whole "erotica writer" thing—and I could really use another of your pep talks about how I should keep on fighting all the monsters in the world, both within and without, because right now it is really _hard_.

I need _you_ to help me through _losing you_.

-= [_P =-

We are dark and we are bright

We are formed of earth and light

From joy and pain our lives are spun

But all too soon, the spinning’s done

– Starhawk, _Weaver, Weaver_


End file.
